Jesus Loves the Shamed - Isaiah 28:16
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock offence; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Is 28:16
In the East, and I believe among Māori, the family group lineage and identity, the whanau/hapu/iwi is primary identity is primary for Māori. Each person must consider the effects his or her speech, beliefs, and actions has on the group – not that that is a bad thing. Individuals in a group will speak, act, and believe in ways that bring honour to their wider communities and avoid bringing shame on the wider community.
Now, a new mixture of innocence/guilt and honour/shame runs through the West and the East, with the rise of the online cancel culture, the honour/shame paradigm of social engagement is becoming more and more dominant in the West. It has become a playground for bullies on social media.
We in the West seem to be living through a new version of the honour-shame culture. People are being publicly shamed and ‘cancelled’ because they have made politically incorrect statement on various matters. This was what Stalin used to do – having shot his real or imagined political enemies, Stalin would have them removed from photographs and encyclopedias as though they never really existed in history – that is an extreme case.
J K Rowling the author of the Harry Potter series has been banned from various events because she said that she did not believe that transgender women are real women. Journalists are being hounded out of newspapers because of politically incorrect editorial decisions.
Tim Hunt, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry was forced to resign from London University for an off-hand remark about working with women in the laboratory. There is no mercy, no forgiveness, no way back in the cancel culture except a grovelling apology and sometimes even that is not enough.
Last term I taught a class on the Exegesis of Paul’s letter to the Romans to my awesome 2nd year students for the first time and I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was how the honour-shame paradigm in Christ’s work of redemption was also present in the argument of Paul’s letter to the Romans, alongside the more traditional guilt-innocence side, in this, the most legal minded of Paul’s letters.
It is true that we are guilty in God’s sight because we have failed to keep his law – and that Christ died in our places on the cross, paying the legal penalty for our sins and imputing his righteousness to us, that we might also have eternal life. But on the cross Christ also took our shame. Our obedience to the call of the gospel not only brings us forgiveness, but we also receive glory (at least in the sight of God). Through faith in Christ the shame caused by our sins is transformed to glory and honour.
The modern West is rapidly coming to resemble the Israel in which Jesus lived – with modern versions of Pharisees, Scribes and lawyers trolling Twitter and Facebook, trashing people deemed to be shameful. The tax-collectors, sinners, lepers, the lame, the blind and prostitutes were totally excluded from society by these self-appointed guardians – excluding people from the synagogues and thus any way of making a more regular living. As with todays’ cancel culture – their accusers were totally blind to their self-righteousness and hypocrisy. In the Gospels Jesus gives very scathing criticism of the Pharisees for their hypocrisy when they were so quick to accuse others.
John’s Gospel is full of examples of Jesus restoring the honour of those who had been cancelled from the Israel of his day: In John ch2, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus saves the bridegroom’s family from embarrassment and very real public cultural shame when their wine ran out early on in the celebrations by supernaturally providing 6 huge jars of the best wine to keep the party going – it now looked as though the bridegroom and his family had kept the best wine until last. Their potential shame was removed.
The woman taken is adultery in John ch8 is restored as her self-righteous accusers were forced to leave one-by-one by Jesus strong and penetrating comment. Truly - a bruised reed he will not break.
In John ch9 a man was shamed because he had been born blind. When interrogated by the Pharisees, the young man’s parents were so afraid to admit that Jesus had really healed him that they made the Pharisees ask their son. “His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue” Jn 9:22 — which was the biggest public shame of all.
Jesus later found the man born blind in the Temple and also revealed to him that he was the promised Messiah. He gave the young man not only the honour of physical sight but also the higher honour of spiritual sight. Jesus transformed his shame-ridden identity into one marked by honour. He replaced a temporary social honour bestowed by hypocrites with the greater honour bestowed only by God.
In John ch21, after his resurrection, Jesus restores the clearly ashamed Peter who had denied him 3 times. There are many, many, more examples if we care to look for them.
But what is so often forgotten is that God did this by his transformation of his naked, shamed, beaten Son on the cross into the resurrected, glorified Lord of the universe three days later. And we are still to see the total honour and glory of the risen Christ on that last great day at the end of time - when we will behold him and his totally healed wounds - the Lamb that was slain who is also Lord of the universe
Where others would respond to our shame with indignation and mockery, Jesus responds with love, forgiveness, and grace. Many are searching for a recovered or even redeemed identity, with the shame lifted away. Our modern culture will not give it to them. But Jesus can and does.
Dear believer, Jesus has not only taken away your sin but he has removed your shame as well: in Rom 9:33, Paul quotes Is 28:16, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock offence; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”